"I HATE eating in front of people."
Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it…
I’ve been through a lot. Some things have changed a lot. Some things remain the same. I’m writing this with the full knowledge that it may sound angsty and melodramatic. I’m hoping it doesn’t. This is what I’m dealing with now, and I’m at a loss.
More and more I realize why I binge.
I started binge-ing in middle school, after school when I got home. It was a way to soothe boredom and hunger, but also it was the way to comfort myself after being bullied and feeling alone. I didn’t have the words or comprehension then for why I binged, but it was deeper than boredom. It was the soother for the sadness I felt about not feeling included.
I’m 22 now, but I carry this with me still…this empty aching feeling of aloneness in my chest. For a while, it turned into absolute apathy, where I no longer cared about what anyone thought or how I looked, and I actually lost weight from not eating. I wouldn’t go back there.
Now I’ve healed a little and changed a little, but old habits die hard. I still am eating to momentarily dull the ache of feeling empty. I’m not overweight. I don’t binge on thousands of calories. I eat relatively healthy. But my eating habits are not healthy. They are obsessive and controlled or uncontrolled, and I don’t know how to fix it.
I still feel alone.
I don’t know how to change, or how else to dull the ache without resorting to food.
My young cousin is anorexic
(this may be triggering)
…and I want so badly to stop it…her. She’s in middle school and in the first throes of anorexia, and she’s such a wonderful, beautiful girl, and there’s nothing I can do. I want to share with her my road and how every day is hard, but you have to fight against the voices in your head and the disordered eating and not eating. I wish I could love her body for her.
Oh God.
I have to believe there’s something beyond this life, because I don’t think I could stand it much longer if there was not.
I’m realizing more and more that I make opinions based on how other people feel over how I feel. If I think people like something, I will often talk in favor of it. Not the really important things, but little things that don’t matter—music, movies, public opinion.
I realized this evening that my back was sore from anxiety.
If people with serious eating disorders can live happy lives without always being in treatment, than I should be able to live a happy life too.
I’m scared of the future. I’m scared that I will amount to nothing. I’m scared that I will be found out. And then I think that’s ridiculous…what would people find?
An obsessive-compulsive, naive, fat, selfish drama queen without real talent?
What is the rock bottom for me? What could people possibly find in my worst nightmare that could make me feel so awful? What am I worried about?
I live grain-free, soy-free, and dairy-free…
and I have to pack lunch every day, so don’t fucking tell me you don’t have time to eat healthy. You do. If you suddenly found that everything you ate outside of your house hurt you, then you would make time.
It’s a life choice. Make it.
<3”tough love” Elle
Why do we binge?
I’m an extreme person. So when I make a mistake, all of a sudden my mind goes, WELL IT’S ALL OUT THE WINDOW. MIGHT AS WELL FUCK UP MORE.
But now I’m at the point where when I do that I actually hurt my body. Like trouble breathing, stomach pains, sick for days hurt.
And I’m realizing that I can’t be extreme like that.
I’m also realizing that eating a cookie won’t kill me. And most of all, if I gain weight, I CAN lose it. I think I partially restricted because I was so scared that I would keep gaining and gaining until I was hideous. But that’s not happened. And I lost weight before as well…so it’s not like I’m impervious to weight loss.
I’m at a point right now where I’m learning to be thankful for where my body is at and how even when it is able to digest, life is great. Because for a while I couldn’t digest anything.
And that’s fucking terrifying.
I’m realizing that sugar does weird things to my body. So I eat barely any of it now. And I feel fantastic. I really do. I think I may be a bit sensitive to sugar, as my thoughts are SO much more disordered when I’m on it than when I’m not. Like SO much more. And I had a discussion with a friend with the same symptoms and it was crazy how similar we were. So I’m beginning to think it’s not just me.
Quitting sugar and quitting grains is fucking hard. It really is. But…it’s kinda worth it. And I’m not strict like never again, I just avoid it most of the time. And I really do feel better. I binge less. And I think about food less.
So it’s something to consider.
Anyway this was long and rambly, but if you got one good thing out of it, it was worth it.
Relapse
Feeling fat and worthless tonight after multiple binges. I could really use some encouragement.
Help?
Overeating and my Eating Disorder
Now that I’m in sort of a recovery zone, I realize that it was not the being fat part that scared me the most (although that did strike terror in me and I still have to fight thoughts that spiral in that direction), it was the not being able to control my eating. The massive massive eat-til-you’re-sick cravings that I had every day all the time. I ate so much so often that I gave myself gastritis. And I knew that it was bad, but I couldn’t control it.
Now that I’ve cut out most sugar and grain, I feel a million times better. I’m not haunted by thoughts of food all day. I don’t have massive cravings that cause me to binge. My blood sugar doesn’t spike and dip, making me irritable and starving. Nope. I’m starting to feel normal.
And now I may weigh a little more than I did when I was full-blown eating disorder, but I find that I don’t mind so much. I don’t hate myself for eating too much, because I rarely do anymore. I never binge. I still eat what I want. And I exercise when I want. But if I don’t, I don’t hate myself. I don’t hurt myself. I just live, reminding myself that my body will even out to a weight that I’m comfortable at, and if I ever want to, I can lose excess weight by eating more healthily and exercising more steadily.
But it doesn’t stress me out. Amazing how that is.
My eating disorder was actually…
a case of candida.
It amazes me now how I used to wonder if maybe something was actually physically wrong with me, when all I could ever think about was food. And I felt as though I couldn’t stop myself from eating. I couldn’t just do one cookie or one little bowl of ice cream, it would become a binge and I wouldn’t even feel satisfied after. I was always craving, always wanting more. I didn’t understand how other people could have such restraint, could eat one cookie and have it be enough.
Little did I know those cravings were a symptom.
How horrible it was spending my entire day thinking about food and my next meal and never feeling full until I was bloated and felt ill and even then I still wanted to eat sweet sugary things.
And now that I’ve stopped eating the sugary things and begun to get this yeast infection under control, boom, the cravings are gone. I don’t think about food all day. I get full so much more easily. I enjoy food again.
Please please get yourself checked out.
If you find that you eat and then within an hour or so you’re hungry again.
If you wake up in the morning and rush to the kitchen to eat, irritable until you’ve had that bowl of cereal
If you eat one bowl of ice cream and then go back for a second or third and then curse yourself and swear that you won’t eat like that again but you do it again anyway
If you are sitting around food and you can’t stop thinking about what’s in front of you and after you finish your food you think about everyone else’s food
If you force yourself to eat weird low calorie foods throughout the day because you know you have to eat a shit ton of whatever to be satisfied…
Then you may be hypoglycemic and have a candida overgrowth like I do.
Look into it. There may be a reason for your obsession over food and it may be biological.
